May 3rd, 2013

The Nook HD and HD+ Get Google Play, Knocking Down The Wall On The Barnes & Noble Android Garden

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The Nook HD and HD+ got a great update late last night (via Engadget), as Barnes & Noble finally moved away from its closed and system-specific app and media ecosystem. The two Android tablets now offer Google Play, and new devices will ship with the app pre-loaded, while existing owners can get it via a software update over-the-air or via direct download. → Read More

April 16th, 2013

The Updated Nook HD+ Is Still Fighting The Tablet Wars

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The Nook HD+ came out last December to mixed reviews. The device had a great screen but problematic bugs caused laggy performance and low scores. The company has come out with an updated version and we took a look.

The 9-inch Nook HD+ is a Retina-quality tablet with a very simple mission – it wants to replace the iPad in the entry-level tablet market. It runs an acceptably fast 1.5 GHz… → Read More

April 9th, 2013

Nook Debuts Nook Press, A New Self-Publishing Platform To Compete With Kindle Direct Publishing

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Barnes & Noble subsidiary Nook today announced the launch of Nook Press, a self-publishing platform to help the e-reader and e-book seller attract more self-publishing authors. The platform will help Nook compete with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, providing a content creation and management tool that builds on Barnes & Noble’s aging PubIt! platform with tools designed in partnership… → Read More

March 27th, 2013

B&N Sweetens The Deal For Windows 8 Users With Free Nook Books And Magazines

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Barnes & Noble content and tablet subsidiary Nook Media, part-owned by Microsoft specifically to help boost content for its new Windows 8 platform, today put some of that strategy into action: it has announced that people who download the Nook app for Windows 8 will get five books and five magazines free of charge. → Read More

March 25th, 2013

Nook To Offer In-App Purchases “By The First Half Of April” Through Fortumo Partnership

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The Barnes & Noble Nook isn’t doing amazingly well by most accounts, including a recently introduced giveaway program from the company itself that isn’t quite (but sure resembles) a fire sale. Now, B&N has made an announcement that is clearly designed to prop up developer interest in the platform, with the introduction of a feature that brings it up-to-speed with others: in-app purchases. → Read More

March 22nd, 2013

Thanks To Poor Holiday Sales, B&N Will Give Away A Free Nook Simple Touch With Every Purchase Of A Nook HD+

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There’s been nothing but bad news coming from Barnes & Noble lately, and it seems as though the company has decided to resort to the desperate measure of giving away Nooks for free. Reuters is reporting that customers who purchase the $269 Nook HD+ will receive a $79 Simple Touch free of charge as a limited offer. It’s a great deal if you’ve been looking for both a tablet and an ebook… → Read More

March 7th, 2013

B&N Widens The Screen For Nook Video, Adds Content From Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount, Relativity, Nat’l Geographic And More

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Barnes & Noble last week noted that Q3 Nook revenues were down some 28% over last year on a hardware slump, but the company also saw a rise of 13.1% on content sales — and today it’s announcing some key deals that it hopes will boost that line of business even further. Today the retailer announced deals with Lionsgate, MGM, Paramount, Relativity Media, National Geographic, Little Pim and… → Read More

February 28th, 2013

Barnes & Noble Misses With $2.2B In Revenue, Loss Of $0.18 Per Share, Nook Revenue Down 26% YOY

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Barnes & Noble has reported Q3 2013 earnings for the fiscal three-month period ending January 31, with a loss of $0.18 per share on quarterly revenues of $2.2 billion. That’s down 8.8 percent from the same period last year, when B&N reported gains of $0.71 per share. Net losses in Q3 totaled $6.1 million, a clear drop from net earnings of $52 million a year ago. Analysts predicted… → Read More

February 25th, 2013

Barnes & Noble Mulling A Break From Hardware Sales In A Move That May Split Company

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According to a number of reports, beleaguered bookseller Barnes & Noble could be shuttering its Nook hardware division and focusing primarily on connecting its digital content to other tablets and readers. In a related report, B&N founder Leonard Riggio is considering a buy-out of the company’s consumer division and spinning out the Nook and collegiate sales divisions while maintaining the… → Read More

January 28th, 2013

Barnes & Noble To Shutter One-Third Of Retail Stores Over The Next 10 Years

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Barnes & Noble has put up an excellent fight over the past few years against the rising tide of digital competitors like iPad, Kindle Fire, etc.

But it would seem that the bookseller has still come up a bit short, as the Wall Street Journal reports that the company has plans to shut down nearly 20 stores per year over the course of the next decade. → Read More

January 3rd, 2013

Amazon’s Gain Is Barnes & Noble’s Loss? Stores, Nook And BN.com All See Holiday Sales Decline

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Amazon may have been touting its record holiday sales season, but Barnes & Noble is now reporting the opposite: according to a report released today, the company’s retail businesses, which include the Barnes & Noble bookstores and BN.com, saw a 10.9 percent decrease in sales over the nine-week holiday period ending December 29, 2012. Nook sales and BN.com were also down. → Read More

December 28th, 2012

Nook Media Takes $89.5M From Pearson, Says Holiday Sales Fell Below Expectations

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Nook Media, the Barnes & Noble subsidiary that handles Nook e-readers and digital content, announced today that education publisher Pearson has invested $89.5 million, giving it a 5 percent stake in the company.

Nook Media spun out from Barnes & Noble earlier this. B&N owns 78.2 percent , while Microsoft (which made a big investment aimed at  bringing Nook content to Windows 8… → Read More

December 10th, 2012

Nook Video Service Launches In U.K. As Barnes & Noble Expands Licensing Deals With HBO, Sony, Warner And Others

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Barnes & Noble’s Nook HD and Nook HD+ tablets went on sale in the UK towards the end of last month — without an on-board video service. That has been added today, with the tablet maker expanding its licensing partnerships — including with BBC Worldwide, HBO, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, STARZ, and Warner Bros — to offer the Nook Video service in the U.K. → Read More

November 29th, 2012

Barnes & Noble Beats Fiscal Q2 2013 Estimates, Reports $1.9 Billion In Revenue And Losses Of $0.04 Per Share

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Literary retailer Barnes and Noble reported its fiscal Q2 2013 earnings this morning, and they’re just a bit stronger than some had forecasted in the days leading up to the release.

The company reported a loss of $0.04 per share on quarterly revenues of $1.9 billion (down 0.4% from the year-ago quarter) — analysts on the other hand expected to see losses of about $0.09 per share on revenues… → Read More

November 22nd, 2012

Nook HD, Nook HD+ Go On Sale In The U.K.: Starting At £159 For 7″ Slate And £229 For 9″ Tablet

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Barnes & Noble’s Nook HD and Nook HD+ have gone on sale in the U.K. today, landing on shelves in retailers John Lewis, Argos, Asda, Dixons, Sainsbury, Waitrose, Blackwell’s and Foyles, and available via http://www.nook.co.uk. In the battle of the mini tablets, the 8GB model of the 7-inch Nook HD undercuts the iPad mini’s price-tag by more than £100. → Read More

October 30th, 2012

N2A Cards Brings Jelly Bean And All Android Apps To B&N’s Nook

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Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color and Tablet are capable and affordable media tablets, but they run an old and locked-down version of Android. If you are fairly technical, you can obviously use CyanogenMod to bypass B&N’s firmware and install a new version of Android on your device. If you’re not that technical, though, the easiest way to get Jelly Bean on your Nook tablet is to buy one of the… → Read More

October 5th, 2012

Kobo Glo And Mini Hit Store Shelves In Canada And The UK, Kobo Arc Tablet To Follow In November

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Kobo announced today via its company blog that the Kobo Glo and Kobo Mini e-readers are now on sale at Canadian retailers Indigo, Future Shop and Best Buy, and in the U.K. at WHSmith. The $80 Mini and $130 Glo were announced in September, just ahead of the unveiling of Amazon’s new Kindle lineup. Kobo also announced today that its Arc 7-inch Android tablet will be hitting store shelves in Nov. → Read More

October 4th, 2012

Nook Media Officially Spins Out Of B&N With Microsoft’s Help, Plans To Enter Ten New Markets By Next Year

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Barnes & Noble has been aiming to spin off their Nook business since last April and now the ink is dry on a new partnership between Nook Media, a subsidiary of B&N, and Microsoft. Microsoft invested $300 million along with $305 million in payments to own 17% of the new company which has a $1.7 billion post money valuation. → Read More

September 30th, 2012

Barnes & Noble Cuts GlowLight Nook Price To $119 As Amazon Prepares To Ship Its Paperwhite Kindles

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Amazon’s shiny new Kindle Paperwhite will start trickling out of the company’s myriad warehouses in short order, but it seems e-reading rival Barnes & Noble won’t let Amazon set foot in the illuminated e-reader market unanswered.

To that end, B&N has announced that it has cut the price of its conceptually similar Nook SimpleTouch with GlowLight from $139 to $119 — the same price as… → Read More

September 25th, 2012

Barnes & Noble Announces Nook Video Apps, Launching This Fall

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If your ecosystem of choice happens to be the Barnes & Noble platform, you’ll be happy to know that the book retailer is now offering Nook Video, a service that lets you buy digital copies of your favorite movies and TV shows directly from your Nook device.

But that’s not all, the service stores content in the Nook Cloud, much like Amazon’s digital locker, so that you can watch the content… → Read More

August 28th, 2012

Barnes & Noble Moves Away From Bookstores For UK Nook Launch: John Lewis Dept Store Named First Partner

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More developments on Barnes & Noble’s plans to launch its Nook devices in the UK, the first market outside of the U.S. to see the e-readers and tablets: today the company has announced that it will sell the devices via John Lewis, a retail heaven for the UK’s middle class, but not a bookstore.

The 37-store chain, which markets itself with the tagline “never knowingly undersold,” will be… → Read More

August 20th, 2012

Feeling The Heat From Amazon’s Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble’s Nook Line Hits The UK This Fall

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We’ve heard a lot of rumors in the last year, but now Barnes & Noble has finally unveiled its first official plans for taking its Nook tablets and e-readers to markets outside of the U.S. Today it announced that it will be launching the devices, starting first with the e-readers, in the UK in October, along with a new UK online storefront for the Nook digital bookstore (2.5 million digital… → Read More

August 12th, 2012

Barnes And Noble Cuts Nook Tablet Prices As New Kindle Rumors Surface

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Well, Barnes and Noble seems to be in a giving mood today. The company revealed earlier this morning that eager customers can nab themselves a 16GB Nook Tablet for $199 — $50 off its original price. Meanwhile, the 8GB Nook Tablet now goes for $179 (down from $199), and aging Nook Color can how be had for the relatively low price of $149.

As for why Barnes and Noble has suddenly decided to… → Read More

July 17th, 2012

B&N Launches Nook For Web, Doesn’t Work On iPhone Or iPad

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Barnes & Noble is bringing its Nook reading platform to the web today, where it will compete with Kindle’s Cloud Reader, iBooks, and Kobo’s Instant Reader head-on. The move is an important one in the sense that one needs a web presence in order to “feel” complete – that is, to exist on every platform that a reader may want to use. However, Kindle Cloud Reader didn’t come to the web back when→ Read More

June 17th, 2012

Sources: Microsoft And Barnes & Noble To Announce Tablet With Xbox Live Streaming Tomorrow

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There’s a ton of speculation around what Microsoft will be announcing on Monday in Los Angeles. Both the Wrap and ATD claim the event will showcase a Microsoft built Windows RT/Windows 8 tablet. According to folks with knowledge of the situation, they’re somewhat right but mostly wrong. We’re being told that a tablet/e-reader built in conjunction with Barnes & Noble is on tap and that it will… → Read More

June 14th, 2012

iPad Sees Small Drop, Nook Tops Kindle Fire In New Tablet Traffic Rankings

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Web traffic from the Apple iPad saw a slight drop in early June, according to new data from the Chitika Ad network, which analyzed a sample containing hundreds of millions of impressions to arrive at its conclusions. In May, the iPad had accounted for 94.64% of all tablet web traffic, the company previously reported. Today, the company says the iPad has dropped to a 91.07% share. However, the… → Read More

April 30th, 2012

B&N 8-K: Microsoft Paying $180M Advance On Nook For Windows 8, $125M For Content, Tech Acquisition

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Microsoft really wants to make sure it can compete against Amazon and Apple in the e-books space — and it’s putting its money where its mouth is. In addition to the $300 million Microsoft is investing for a 17.6 percent stake in Newco, the un-named subsidiary that will now house B&N’s Nook and other digital businesses, it looks like it is putting other money towards the venture, according to… → Read More

April 30th, 2012

Microsoft Makes $300M Investment In New Barnes & Noble Subsidiary To Battle With Amazon And Apple In E-books

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Barnes & Noble has found a new, major partner in its fight to get an edge over Amazon and Apple in the market for e-books and the devices being used to consume them: it is teaming up with Microsoft in what the two are calling a strategic partnership, name yet to be determined.

It will come in the form of a new subsidiary of B&N that will include all of its Nook business as well as its… → Read More

April 24th, 2012

Fly Or Die: The Nook Simple Touch With GlowLight

It’s a bit hard to officially review the Nook Simple Touch With GlowLight as it’s almost exactly the same as the previous version but with one important improvement: it glows.

Arguably, the Nook and the Kindle are equal contenders in the race to the e-reader throne and although I do prefer the Kindle Fire over the Nook Tablet, I feel the Nook Simple Touch is still an excellent choice and one… → Read More

April 12th, 2012

The B&N Nook Simple Touch With GlowLight: Pre-Order Today For $139, Hits Stores In May

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Barnes & Noble just announced its latest ereader: The Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight. It doesn’t look any different from the previous model until you turn it on. That’s when the magic happens. Powered by a front-lit screen dubbed GlowLight, the new Nook emits a pleasant glow that’s sort of different from traditional backlighting. It’s easier on the eyes but the light cuts the battery life in… → Read More